In The Trenches

The Podcast Answer Man: Cliff Ravenscraft Have you ever been passionate about a pastime, but didn't think it could ever develop into anything more (like a business)? Maybe it's time to reevaluate your thinking. In today's broadcast of In The Trenches, I sit down with Cliff Ravenscraft, a man who turned a passionate side project into a 6 figure business in a few short years. Cliff started podcasting as a hobby in 2005… In a couple short years, his podcasts had garnered enough attention for him to quit his day job and pursue podcasting full time. Now, Cliff not only produces multiple podcasts (and personally recorded over 3,000 episodes), but he is also a podcasting consultant and coach. I had the honor of meeting Cliff in person when he and Pat Flynn hosted a meetup in Nashville.  Not only does Cliff know his stuff when it comes to entrepreneurship, specifically in regards to building your audience through podcasting, but he’s a super down to earth person. If you’re at all interested in podcasting, marketing,

Jason Andrew Bond: Bestselling Author In today’s broadcast, I sit down with bestselling author, Jason Andrew Bond. Jason is a full time fiction writer who has written several novels and short stories.  His first novel, Hammerhead, has over 100 5-star reviews on Amazon (as of this writing), and hit best seller status shortly after its release. While that's remarkable in its own right - it's rare for any author to hit bestseller status, let alone on their first novel - the most remarkable part is this: Jason self-published and had no massive marketing push for his book. Everything he did, he did it himself. Hammerhead made it to bestseller status through word of mouth alone. THAT is impressive. You might think this success, so early and so quickly, has allowed Jason to sit back and relax a little, but nothing could be further from the truth. As you’ll hear in today’s interview, success isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. So if you’re a writer, blogger, author or just curious about the creative process, take out a

Change is Good In today’s broadcast, I sit down with Ryan Delk – creative entrepreneur, networker extraordinaire and Lead Growth at Gumroad. If you’re not familiar with Gumroad, it’s the platform I use for all my products and allows me to make my products Pay What You Want (believe it or not, almost no other platform out there has this same feature). Take a test drive by checking out my book 2 Days With Seth Godin below (as you can see, it seamlessly integrates with my website – and all that took was a few lines of code that I copy and pasted into this page). 2 Days With Seth Godin In today’s broadcast of In The Trenches, Ryan and I talk about the power of a platform like Gumroad, why something like this was the natural evolution of online commerce, and how it’s changing the digital commerce landscape as we know it. If you enjoy today’s broadcast, please leave an honest review on iTunes.  The more ratings and reviews I get for the podcast, the more reach and impact it will have.  So if you enjoy it, spread th

Change Your Diet - Change Your Life Today’s guest is Jennifer Blanchard – a writer, creative wellness and writing coach, and all around creative entrepreneur. Jennifer helps entrepreneurs take their books from idea to draft, so they can grow their audience and propel their business to the next level, without fear, distractions or disorganization.  She does this through a focus on creative wellness (how food, fitness and health affects our creativity). Currently, Jennifer is in the process of consolidating her many websites online into one resource, which you can find at jenniferblanchard.net. She has an eBook coming out at the end of September called Creative On Command: Instant Inspiration Exactly When You Need it, which is all about how health affects creativity. If you’ve ever suffered from lack of motivation or creativity, definitely check out Jennifer’s website and pick up her new book when it's released. What We Talk About How Jennifer found her way as a writer, entrepreneur and coach Why she decided

Are You Ready to Ignite? Today’s guest is a massively successful podcaster, a U.S. Army veteran, and one of my major inspirations for creating my OWN podcast – John Lee Dumas. John is the Founder and Host of Entrepreneur On Fire, a daily podcast that interviews todays most inspiring and successful Entrepreneurs.  He’s also the author of the hugely successful ebook: Podcast Launch: A Step by Step Podcasting Guide. John is an ex Army Officer who served 8 years in the Army including a tour in Iraq.  When John transitioned out of the military, he worked at some great jobs, but, as he put it, he wasn’t able to find his passion.  And that’s when Entrepreneur On Fire was born. In the past year, John has grown his podcast from 0 to 175,000 unique downloads every month.  For those unfamiliar with podcast metrics, this is an extremely impressive figure, and is a testament to John’s work ethic and creative ingenuity. In today's broadcast, John walks us through the precise steps he took to create a 6-figure business from

Your Higher Purpose In today's interview, I talk with Dan about The Higher Purpose Project. It's an intensive training course designed to help you live a life of courage aligned with your highest values. It pretty much goes without saying that I support the project and encourage anyone interested to reach out to Dan and apply to be a part of it. Starting From Scratch In 2012, Dan Adams did something impossible. With no experience, no resources and no connections, Dan created an award winning (2012 ESPY Award winning, actually) social project called Mission Kilimanjaro where he and a small team of veterans and civilians summited Kilimanjaro. Of course, summiting Kilimanjaro, while impressive, isn’t the remarkable part...climbing it alongside a quadruple amputee while raising awareness for disabled kids and veterans (and donating $25,000 to the Mwereni Integrated School for the Blind) certainly is. The Call to Adventure Dan’s story, though, like so many others, didn’t start at this culminating point – it st

Prepare for the (smart business) Revolution... The White House, the California Governor’s Office, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley – these are some of the most well-known and most powerful places in the world – and John Corcoran’s worked in all of them. John is an attorney and small business advisor with the Corcoran Law Firm outside of San Francisco, where he helps entrepreneurs, business owners and real estate investors.  He’s also the founder of SmartBusinessRevolution.com where he helps entrepreneurs succeed, online and off. Earlier in his career, John served in the White House, as a Speechwriter and Press Aide in for the governor of California, for a law firm in heart of Silicon Valley, and, at one point, John even worked in Hollywood. One thing I know about John – he is a networking master and a genuinely selfless person.  He’s personally helped me connect with some really big players in the business world, so I know firsthand his abilities.  I highly encourage subscribing to his newsletter and checking ou

Today’s broadcast is part 2 in a 2 part series. Part 1 can be found by clicking here.  In part 1 (broadcast 9), Tommy and I talk about crowd funding.  What it is, how it works, and how to successfully create a crowd funding campaign for your product. Content Marketing 101  In today's broadcast, Tommy Walker explains everything there is to know about content marketing. What is content marketing? Simply put: it's content with a purpose (and that purpose is to elicit one of 4 responses - see below). As Tommy explains, every time you interact with a piece of content, it’s a transaction.  If you're reading this blog post right now, you're exchanging your time and attention for information from me.  All content works this way (from youtube to books to live music), but unless it has a purpose, it's not content marketing. The 4 types (and purposes) for content: Viral Content: To be shared Discussion Content: To be commented on / discussed Lead Content: To get a lead (filling out a form, email address, etc.) Sale

Today’s broadcast is part 1 in a 2 part series. The original interview ran over an hour because the conversation was so great and I couldn’t stop asking questions…so I broke it up to make each broadcast about 30 minutes. I think that makes the content more digestible and actionable (and there is some very actionable content here if you’re an artist, writer or entrepreneur trying to increase your reach, impact and sales). So enjoy today’s broadcast and stay tuned for part 2 next week.[/infopane] It Started because of a Pair of Pants...  In 2009, Tommy Walker’s life changed forever. For several years Tommy struggled to find his way as an entrepreneur.  From 2005 to 2009, Tommy built his online business on the side while he worked a full-time, unsatisfying job.  After a ridiculous series of events in late 2008, Tommy’s employer fired him over a pair of pants. True story. Turns out, getting fired was the kick in the pants (pun intended) Tommy needed to take his business to the next level.  Since 2009, Tommy’s bu

Getting Paid to Be You The majority of people go to work begrudgingly - grinding away to make ends meet. What if it didn't have to be that way? What if, instead of sucking it up, putting your head down and getting to work, you could wake up brilliantly excited every day to do work you love? This isn't a fairy tale - it's possible - and Jonathan Mead proves it. And now he helps others do the same. About Jonathan Mead Jonathan is a lifelong learner, troublemaker and entrepreneur. Doesn’t seem like your conventional mix of attributes and it isn't - but it makes Jonathan (and the businesses he’s created) stand out from the pack. Jonathan got his start online with a simple blog. After several years, Jonathan grew that simple blog into a 6 figure business through coaching and digital products designed to help people live and work on their own terms.  It’s called Paid to Exist and the name fits. One of Paid to Exist's premiere products, Trailblazer, actually helped me get my blog off the ground. Without Trailblazer

Vagabonding 101: Have you ever wanted to pick up your backpack, head out the door and leave your world behind? In a very real way, that’s exactly what Benjamin Jenks did. Most people only dream of backpacking across the country – Benjamin took action. But Benjamin didn’t set out onto the open road to run away from anything – he set out to overcome his shyness. What followed was over 23,000 miles of hitchhiking across the United States while couch surfing for over 400 days.  In the process, Benjamin met and interacted with dozens of people, had some crazy adventures and overcame his shyness once and for all. Talk about a crash course in fear conquering. In today’s broadcast, Benjamin and I talk about what it’s like to face fear head on, hitchhike across the United States, create viral videos and how he managed to afford his lifestyle through online business. Don’t think it’s possible to live whatever type of lifestyle you’d like to live?  Maybe you need to listen to this interview to see just how possible any

You Can Change Your Life Or at least that's what Clay Hebert did. In 2008, Clay was at a crossroads.  Should he continue to work for Accenture, where he had a guaranteed salary and could easily move up the ladder?  Or should he branch off on his own path, a path completely uncertain and paved with obstacles and possible failure points. It turns out serendipity was on his side: it just so happened that as Clay began soul-searching, he noticed a blog post by Seth Godin titled 'If You Could Change Your Life'... Would you? And for Clay, the answer was yes. Starting From Scratch After the 6 month intensive MBA program, Clay went straight into bootstrapping his first business: Tribes Win. At Tribes Win, Clay worked with a plethora of clientele, from entrepreneurs to authors, and helped them build their Tribes. After the success with Tribes Win, Clay moved onto bootstrapping two more companies: Workhacks.com and Spindows.com Both businesses have the chance to redefine their genres (and yes, you should check them ou

When Something is Broken... What do you do about it? When you see a problem, what's the first thing you do? Most of us probably Google a solution and if we don’t find something in a few minutes we learn to deal with the problem and move on. But not Nate Kutsko. When Nate sees a problem that no one has solved, he solves it himself. The Art of Inventing Nate spent most of his life inventing solutions to common (and sometimes not so common) problems. A couple years ago, Nate noticed that a power tool he owned had no proper belt holding solution on the market.  Most of us would be forced to deal with this problem or try to rig a regular belt to make it fit. Not Nate: he invented a holding clip solution for the product. Nate is also a golf enthusiast.  One day, he was wondering why there wasn't a way to properly teach yourself to golf rather than pay for expensive coaches.  Most of us would simply spend more time on the driving range or play more rounds of golf. That wasn't good enough for Nate.  Instead, he inve

What do you want to do with your life? It’s not a rhetorical question. What do you want to do with your life? That's the difficult question a good friend of Jeff Goins asked him a few years ago; before Jeff had created Goinswriter.com, before Jeff landed a deal with a publisher, and before he truly started living his passion. The questions we ask ourselves (and get asked) matter.  The hard ones usually matter the most. Stop Hiding Jeff thought earnestly about the question and answered: "I want to be a writer." His friends response: “You don’t have to want to be a writer, you are a writer.  You just need to write.” The realization hit Jeff like a ton of bricks.  His friend was right.  All he had to do was start writing. So, with a clear purpose and direction, Jeff created his blog: Goinswriter.com. In his first year, he wrote over 300 blog posts (300!) for his website and another 100 (100!) guest blog posts for various other websites.  In less than two years, Jeff built his blog to a monthly readership of 100

Meetings are Broken Be honest, you know they are. How many meetings do you have a week?  How many in a single day? If you're like me, you spend about 30-50% of your time preparing for or attending meetings throughout the workweek. And for the good of whichever organization you're a part of, this has to stop. That's where Al Pittampalli comes in... Shaking up the Status Quo Al began his conventional career with Ernst & Young LLP as an IT adviser. There, he worked on-site with numerous Fortune 1000 companies and found a disturbing trend... These companies held a lot of purposeless meetings. But he also noticed the rare exceptions: the companies with a culture of meaningful activity and purpose; companies that held quick, powerful, and, most importantly, rare meetings. These companies performed better across the board and avoided pointless meetings at all costs. Al figured out the formula, and now he's bringing it to the rest of the world...or at least those willing to shake up the status quo and enter into

Relent Not One Inch If starting something from scratch is tough... And choosing a course of action, a direction, and a speed is scary... Then giving up a lucrative job in New York to bootstrap a business, create a paradigm-shifting, book publishing venture, and travel across the world in a van in 1080 days must be madness. But that's exactly what AJ Leon decided to do. Why? In AJ's own words (click to tweet): I don’t want to relent not one f@#%ing inch. [AJ Leon] Choosing a Course From an outside perspective, AJ had everything going for him; a financially stable job in New York, an amazing and supportive soon to be wife, and a lucrative promotion just days away. Except on the inside, everything wasn't so great. AJ had a painful epiphany the day before a big promotion; he realized if he takes this promotion, he's stuck in this lifestyle forever (a lifestyle that, while socially respectable, drained him of energy and passion). The next day, AJ quit his job and chose his own course; no plan, no preparation, no

If you've been following this blog for any period of time, you know I've recorded several interviews with game-changers, status-quo challengers, and creative insurgents on topics like creativity, writing, publishing, bootstrapping, and entrepreneurship. All of those interviews I hosted via dropbox - which meant you could download the episode to your computer, but it came with a bunch of limitations. After a conversation with Jeff Goins (www.goinswriter.com), he suggested I make this series into a legitimate podcast series - one you can find on iTunes, Zune, etc... So, I did it. Now you can: Stream the file from this website Get the file on your iPhone, Mp3 player, Zune, etc... Find this in iTunes (may take a few days to populate the first episodes), Zune, and other podcast websites Download the file to your computer (because they're so good you'll want to listen to them ALL the time) I have definitely upped the quality.  Let me know what you think! But for those new to my website and content... What's